The 8th Cairo Video Festival for video art and experimental films is due to run this year between 5 and 28 February, with a live video performance scheduled to open this year's edition at Downtown's Rawabet Theatre. According to a recent press release by the festival organisers, the upcoming edition will feature a total of 119 works from over 60 countries. The participants include “individual artists, collectives, featured festivals" with other works selected from "the outcome of two production workshops by Medrar and commissioned work.” “All works featured in the 8th edition are no longer than 30 minutes of duration, and produced after January 2014,” reads the press release. The selected works span a vast array of genres including “performing video,music video, glitch, performance, dance, animation, CGI, narrative, film essay, and video poetry." Medrar and an apartment on Downtown's Hoda Shaarawy street will be hosting two exhibitions, while art-house cinema Zawya and the French Institute will hold selected screenings. Of the 119 selected works, 85 were chosen through an open call which received over 2800 applications from more than 100 countries. They were selected and nominated by the festival jury, which this year is comprised of Jeroen Kooijmans (The Netherlands), Mohammad Shawky Hassan (Egypt) and Ghassan Salhab (Lebanon). The edition will also feature invited works. The 8th Cairo Video Festival is organised by Medrar with support from the American Embassy, Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute (DEDI), Japan Foundation, Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Center and Pro Helvetia. The festival, which continues to host activities all year long, started in 2005 by a collective of artists who were experimenting with new mediums, and later developed it to be a platform for video artists, curators and the public, capitalising on a growing interest in new media production. Now a regular annual festival starting with its 5th round in 2013, which was held at the then freshly inaugurated Medrar, the Cairo Video Festival has established itself as an important event in Cairo's art scene, and continues to expand. Programme: The festival opens on 5 February, 7pm at Rawabet Theatre, and will run till 28 February. Venues: Rawabet Theatre, 3 Hussein Al-Meamar St, Cairo Medrar for Contemporary Art , 7 Gamal El-Din Abou El-Mahasen St, 1st Floor, Apt 4, Garden City, Cairo 29 Hoda Shaarawy St, 3rd floor, Downtown Cairo Zawya, 4 Abdel Hamid Said St, off Talaat Harb St, Downtown Cairo French Institute, 1 Madrasset El-Huquq El-Frinseya St, El-Mounira, Downtown Cairo For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture
